


he dreams of fingers running together like paint

by usoverlooked



Category: Community
Genre: AU, Angst, Dreams, F/M, Gen, darkest timeline fic (sort of), etc and so on what is proper tagging?
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-11-05
Updated: 2012-11-05
Packaged: 2017-11-18 00:38:21
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,818
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/554965
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/usoverlooked/pseuds/usoverlooked
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Abed Nadir dreams of a girl. He knows she's not real, really, but it'd be nice if she were.</p>
            </blockquote>





	he dreams of fingers running together like paint

**Author's Note:**

  * For [easternepiphany](https://archiveofourown.org/users/easternepiphany/gifts), [satellites (brella)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/brella/gifts).



> unedited and produced while listening to "a-team" on repeat so a bit sad and sloppy, but most good things are, right? (shh, just go with it for my sake.) based off this thing i made on tumblr [[x](http://usoverlooked.tumblr.com/post/35011922127/shes-not-real-abed)]

Abed has meetings at 8:00 am every Tuesday and also alternating Saturdays. They call them meetings but he knows what they really are; therapy sessions. His therapist was a well-intenioned woman who insisted he call her Britta ("No, really, Dr is just so formal and well, we're friends aren't we Abed?" but he knew that no, they were not friends because friends didn't schedule things this regularly or get paid to spend time together). Britta showed up, almost consistently, five to fifteen minutes late to every appointment, although she made up for it by bringing him organic snacks and suggesting British television shows.

"I saw her again this weekend," Abed begins on this particular Tuesday, after the obligatory greetings and offering of a (whole grain) cookie. Britta jots this down (another thing friends don't do - he's pretty sure anyways) and nods, encouraging him to continue. "We were at a restaurant, I believe. She made me a sculpture with peas. It was nice."  
The girl was nameless, she always is. Her hair is brunette, her eyes a lovely swampy green. Abed is halfway to being in love with her, if Britta would only let him.

"Did she talk to you this time?" Britta asks. Abed peers at her for a moment. His therapist wears seriously glasses and crisp blazers, hair dyed brown (he only knows it is dyed because there's a wedding picture - she's blonde) and tugged back in a tight bun.

"No, just motioned at things." He admits before returning to his train of thought on Britta. Abed considers that the hair and clothing are to restrain herself. That she has to pull herself into this role so some other part of herself doesn't take over. It intrigues him, distracting him to the point of her having to tap his knee with her pencil.

"Abed, I was asking if you think this means she's fading from you?" Britta tries very hard to hide the pride at this idea, but it slips through; sunlight in the crack of windows on a morning in December. Abed considers.

Abed does not want the girl to disappear. This dream girl, who is incredibly flawed (in some dreams she just sits in an empty room screaming, her mouth a soundless yawn) but still beautiful. Some dreams it's pure darkness aside from her and in some ways Abed likes those the best.

"That can't be it." He concludes. Despite all of Britta's attempts, he holds steadfast to this girl. This idea of a slip of a girl, all faded and blurred at the edges. Maybe it's better for him, he's reasoned a thousand times before, better to have someone he knows to be intangible.

"I wouldn't let her go like that." Abed adds after a moment, looking down to arrange his cookies on the plate Britta gave him. Britta reaches, slowly and gently, touches his wrist, redirecting his gaze to her.

"She's not real, Abed." Britta says so softly he wonders if she wants this girl to be real, just the same as he does. Abed swallows and nods. Britta removes her hand and looks down at her notes. Her face twitches, shaking between neutral and a frown before she manages a smile.

"Maybe we could discuss the last episode of Doctor Who?" She says this like it's the best olive branch she could possibly think of. Abed takes it, starts in on the topic of River Song's hair and runs with it for Britta's sake.

The first dream, they were in a classroom; the girl passed back a paper for a study group sign up. Abed tried and tried to sign it but his attempts failed in drastic ways; pencils melting upon contact with the paper, pens writing the name "Jeff" repeatedly, even a quill that simply ran from his hand. All the while the girl smiled at him, her eyes growing sadder with each attempt, making the entire thing terrifying. Abed hated disappointing people.

Abed leaves Britta's shop, waving at her husband as he passes the man in their car. He knows that he is Britta's only appointment on Tuesdays (she has a kid now - "a towheaded munchkin" as she cheerfully describes him and therefore has fewer clients overall) and so she forces her husband to cart her to and from work. He likes the idea of this; the monotony of it, helping someone merely because you care for them. The husband seems nice, albeit overly attached to sunglasses and a nice Jetta that he parks in a handicapped spot every week. If it weren't inappropriate, Abed likes to think he could ask the husband about what Britta is like when she doesn't have to pull herself into a bun-wearing therapist.

The girl wore a bun in a dream once, but it kept falling out, sticking to her neck in the heat. It was a good sort of dream, she got angry with him for reasons that went beyond him, then turned into Marion from Indiana Jones and they were happy. It was one of his favorite dreams, an early one where he was still getting used to the fact that he had a reoccurring character in his dreams.

Abed's car is very old, but the neighbor who sold it to him claimed that gave it character. The neighbor was elderly and everything he said was either an exaggeration or an inappropriate joke, but he tried so hard to make friends that Abed sometimes ate dinner with him. Abed knew what it was to be disliked, understood the feeling of not belonging. Besides, the neighbor had sold him the car at a low price and the car was pretty good. Abed checks his cell phone for any messages from his friend Troy. Troy is a jock, but Abed knows he's a geek at heart. He gets excited about silly things, like title cards on shows changing and Abed loves him in a brotherly way for it.

Abed drives to his house without incident. As he pulls into his parking garage, he is greeted by his neighbor. She bleats a hello at him, smiling too largely at him. At first, when she did this, Abed assumed she distrusted him because of his nationality or awkward demeanor, but slowly realized it was merely how she was. She talked to him about one of her sons over a bag of groceries for a bit before inviting Abed to her church again. He declined, again, and extracted himself from her.

Abed is not very religious, but in his dream he watched Christmas specials with the brunette girl one time. Her head had slowly settled on his chest, fitting there so comfortably that he felt it's absence upon waking. Her fingers had entwined with his and because it was a dream, the fingers blurred together so his were hers and vice versa. It was nice like that, although admittedly unsustainable as he would need his left hand for things and her with her right. But it was nice to pretend otherwise.

Abed likes his apartment building. The people that live there are nice, more friendly than the people at Troy's place (a man with strange hair and an iguana tried to sell him drugs there once) and the hallway is always well-lit. Today, however, something is off. The door three down from his is open, laughter and pop music spilling from it. He wanders down, drawn to the sound of it.

The girl stands there, in a too large sweater, leggings and a men's sweater. Abed freezes, his hand on the doorknob and his mouth open. She turns and quirks her head at him, expression caught midway in a smile.  
"Hi," she says and her lips are the color of berries and she's Snow White, he's the Huntsman. She's an innocent and he's a ruined man who makes up people from his dreams.

"Your music's loud." He responds because he isn't sure how to say 'I fell in love with you in a dream, want to watch a movie sometime?' and he's not sure he wants to. She blinks.

"Right, yeah, sorry, I just moved in and..." Her voice trails off and she busies herself by playing with the stereo. She blushes, then looks at him. She's studying him, this dream girl with the terrible taste in music.  
"Do I know you?" She asks, her eyes sort of settling on his hands, which are folded awkwardly against his shoulder bag.

This is Abed's chance to tell her. They fought wars together once, losing but still happy and cheerful. They walked to places, her hands on his arm, their fingers looped together and her cheeks rosy from talking so fast to get a story out, his teeth chattering as he led her somewhere during the winter months. She saved him from himself and he saved her from Jabba the Hut and it all blurred together in a world that made sense. If this was a movie, he'd tell her or kiss her and she'd see it all in technicolor flashbacks, her eyes tearing up at the perfection. But this isn't a movie.

"I don't think so." He answers. Abed turns and leaves without another word and wonders if it's weird enough that she'll become someone else that just says hello in passing. Part of him hopes as much, figures it will be easier that way.

Because, Abed used to dream about other people too. Britta and her husband argued across tables and bars and he sat in between the two with Troy as his companion. There were dreams were Troy had a goat and lived with the man who sold Abed his car. His Christian neighbor stayed with them all, toting a comically oversized purse. Abed tried to tell Troy about some of these, but it got twisted and wrong and that's how he ended up with Britta as his therapist. 

The odd part of the dreams was that they stopped when he met them. He met Troy and stopped dreaming about singing to mice and eating giant cookies. Britta became his therapist and his dreams about robot girls in ice palaces halted. He brushed against Britta's husband and dreams about pep talks and love triangles faded out. The godly neighbor brought him cookies and the old man shouted at him about Muslims and dreams of study groups disappeared. Abed handled all this well, although this dream version of himself seemed to be happier. At least, he was around people who were happy and he was part of something. It's alright though, his father always says it's a stupid man who lives with his head in the clouds. Aside from that, a study group is a truly stupid thing to dream of. Abed has never been to college, he doesn't need a degree to work in his family falafel shop.  


He doesn't dream of the girl again.

**Author's Note:**

> wow, so major (x10) thanks to kate, brella and alex for encouraging (/yelling at me) to write this. comments are much appreciated.  
> also, obviously this is some dark timeline (at least for abed, i feel like some of the rest have their life together) hence doctor who existing and not inspector spacetime (it made sense in my head i swear).


End file.
